Over the last decade, athletes have adopted the foam roller as a vital tool of their pre-habilitation, rehabilitation, and core training processes. As a post workout self-massage device, the foam roller helps to breakdown adhesions in muscles and provide for quicker recovery. As a core-training device, the foam roller provides an unstable platform that allows an athlete to train stabilizing muscles that are hard to isolate with traditional core exercises. It's an invaluable tool to anyone that takes training seriously. The foam roller has one flaw. It is hard to transport. While lightweight, foam rollers are bulky. This is a nuisance for anyone with limited space at home or who would like to take their foam roller on the road (either to the gym, Pilates studio, business trip, back-country, or triathlon).
Vigorous stretching for athletes is very beneficial and cannot be neglected. In the case of muscle knots however, stretching alone is not always enough. An effective way of attacking a troublesome muscle knot is by the application of direct pressure. The art of massage has long been used to relieve various muscle, tendon and other connective tissue ailments. The kneading of muscles, for example, imparts a modification to the muscle tissue that acts beneficially on the nerves, the muscles being controlled by the nerves in both their movement and nourishment, health of the muscle tissue due to improved blood circulation, and effusion of waste material from the muscle and connective tissues. Accordingly, numerous self-actuated devices are known in the art for massaging muscles or other tissues. A highly-effective, yet economical device to eliminate and prevent muscle knots and treat other tissue ailments in the back and limbs is a foam roller. A foam roller is a firm foam cylinder usually having a diameter of about 6 inches. In use, the user lies on the foam roller to allow his or her own body weight to apply pressure to the muscles that are directly on top of the roller. By rolling back and forth on the roller, the user effectively kneads the muscle. A full array of movements can be performed, but most typically this device is used on back, leg, arm, and neck muscles. The idea is similar to using a rolling pin to roll out lumps in bread dough. A foam roller is a good alternative to repetitive trips to the massage therapist and is a highly-effective way to treat and prevent the most common injuries seen in all athletes. Additionally, the roller can be used as a spinal self-adjusting device. By rolling with the roller perpendicular to the spine, a user can adjust each vertebra individually and prevent the need for repetitive trips to the chiropractor. More so, many core strengthening exercises have been developed to use the rollers shape to help isolate hard to train stabilizing muscles.
Foam rollers are generally lightweight. However, athletes, sports teams or others with mobile massage therapy needs often fly to their destinations, making even a single foam roller, let alone enough for a team, a bulky addition. Therefore, there remains a need for a massage roller that can assume a smaller profile.